by Misty Evans
And then, miracle of miracles, the CNA who’d been helping Bianca had hurried by. Cal had stopped her and turned on the charm.
Asking her where they’d taken Halston would have put the gal on alert and bring trouble on his head, so Cal took another route. He asked her about the cute nurse she’d ridden down in the elevator with. Where could he find her?
The CNA must have seen the honest truth in Cal’s eyes—that he was smitten. “Lower level,” she’d told him. “She’s hanging around radiology waiting for the senator.”
“Thank you.”
He’d kissed her cheek with relief and she’d hollered after him as he sprinted back to the elevators. “Good luck!”
Luck. He’d needed luck, because when he’d gotten to radiology, Bianca wasn’t there.
He’d lost her. In more ways than one, the voice in his head told him.
For some idiotic reason, memories of his lost friends flashed through his mind and stole his breath. Tank, the big lug, intercepting a football Cal had thrown and running it in for a touchdown during one of their breaks while waiting for orders in Afghanistan. Avery singing Can’t Touch This and doing his MC Hammer routine after a successful mission saving a group of missionaries in a Colombian jungle. Butcher discussing quantum physics one night under the stars with an American professor they’d rescued from a Somalian prison.
All three men’s bodies limp and lifeless.
Cal struggled to breathe, feeling like he’d been hit in the nuts with a baseball bat. My fault. Losing his friends, losing Bianca…my fault.
People swarmed out of various rooms, knocking into him. He plowed against the tide with one shoulder, his uninjured one, and kept looking for Bianca in her Mickey Mouse shirt. She might still be wearing a mask—smart girl—to help hide her identity, but there was no way he’d miss that white-blonde hair of hers and her purple glasses.
Radiology. Where the fuck was it?
Cal grabbed a passing nurse. “Where’s X-ray?”
She jerked her arm out of his grip. “Sir, you need to leave. This is not a drill.”
The fire alarm continued to blare and Cal had to yell over it. “My wife’s in radiology. I’m not leaving without her.”
“Radiology’s been evacuated. The nurses will take care of her.” Now she grabbed his arm. “You come with me.”
He removed her fingers, not in a brusque way, but with force. “No, ma’am. Just point me toward the radiology department.”
She must have seen the determination in his eyes. “See that blue line up there?” She pointed to the wall and a blue stripe of paint near the ceiling. A yellow stripe ran above it and a red one below. “Follow that. It’ll lead you right to her. But I’m telling you, she’s not there.”
He nodded and took off, once more fighting against the stream of evacuating people, patients, and staff. The blue stripe turned a corner and so did Cal. This hallway was clearer and he raced down it, continuing to follow that damned stripe.
Another turn and he caught sight of the senator’s bodyguard jogging around a patient in a wheelchair, headed for an exit sign.
“Hey!” Cal yelled, but the man didn’t stop. Probably didn’t hear him over the alarm and the noise. So he gave chase, even though that was the opposite direction from the blue stripe.
When he burst through the exit door, he found himself at a back dock, an ambulance backed up to the concrete and the senator being loaded into it by a nurse and two EMTs.
The bodyguard’s hand went immediately to his weapon. The nurse glanced up.
But it wasn’t Bianca’s blue eyes looking back at him from behind her purple frames, or her blond ponytail swinging around the nurse’s shoulders.
Cal pulled up short and raised his hands to let the guard know he meant no harm. “I’m looking for the nurse who rode down in the elevator with the senator. Have you seen her?”
The man shook his head and Cal turned on his heel and went back inside, yanking out his cell phone to see if he’d received any messages. No service. He nearly threw the thing against the nursing station as he passed by.
If Bianca had evacuated like everyone else, she’d be outside. Maybe she was at the truck, waiting for him with Maggie. He prayed she’d at least thought about the fact her assassin could be out there and had taken precautions.
But she wasn’t a trained SEAL or even a field agent. His gut cramped so hard, he nearly doubled over. Fighting the emotion, Cal headed for the exit.
“Reese!”
Hearing his name called with such authority brought Cal up short. He spun around and nearly dropped his phone. Instead he snapped into a salute. “Senior Chief?”
Justin Lugmeyer strode toward him, seeming unfazed by the fire alarm or the last few people running by. He gave a quick return salute. “What are doing here, SEAL?”
There was too much going on, too much to explain, and no goddamn time. “Trying to find my wife. What are you doing here?”
As the man drew closer, it dawned on Cal that Lugmeyer wasn’t in uniform. “You missed your hearing this morning.”
Not an answer. “How did you find me?”
Anger snapped in Lugmeyer’s eyes. He wasn’t used to being questioned. “I met up with Senator Halston to support him on his stops today. He became ill and I accompanied him here. I never expected to find you roaming the halls.”
Cal’s gut gave a funny twinge. “Huh, I didn’t see you upstairs.” At the narrowing of Lugmeyer’s eyes, Cal added, “Sir.”
The senior chief locked his pale eyes on Cal. “I stepped outside the hospital to make some calls earlier. The senator appears to have been poisoned. That may affect national security.” He stepped closer, getting in Cal’s face. “Imagine my surprise to find you here.”
“I can explain everything, but right now I have to find Bianca.”
Lugmeyer held his position, the sour look still on his face. “Where is she, your wife?”
“I don’t know. She was with the senator, then disappeared before the alarm went off.”
“Where’s the senator?”
“They took him out back to an ambulance. I don’t know where they are transporting him.”
A muscle jumped in Lugmeyer’s stony face. “Are you sure your wife is still in the building?”
“No, sir,” he answered honestly. “But I have to find her.”
“I’m sorry, son, but since you didn’t show up for your hearing this morning, you’ve been declared AWOL. It’s my duty to take you into custody and back to San Diego, regardless of what’s going on with your wife.”
Cal’s pulse sped like a racecar. He wished someone would turn off that damned alarm so he could think. “With all due respect, sir, that’s not going to happen.”
He started to walk away, felt a strong hand grab his shoulder. “A good SEAL follows orders, Reese.”
A good SEAL…
The words rang in his head. He’d heard those before. Heard them come out of Lugmeyer’s mouth, but something clicked in his brain.
Warfighter.
Cal grabbed his head. A thousand images splintered in his brain, the jagged edges rising and falling but not coming together. Until they did.
“Something doesn’t feel right.” The words had rolled off his tongue that night as Cal and his men watched the camp.
“It’s too quiet,” Tank had said.
“Where are the guards?” Avery had asked over his comm unit.
Cal had listened to the stillness. Too quiet was right, not even the barking of a dog from the village three clicks away or the scratching of a scorpion in the sand.
But he’d felt the presence of men. Many more men than in his team.
Trap.
He had no proof, only his finely tuned instincts. That and the fact he knew Lugmeyer was keeping something from them. Something crucial to this mission. Cal had overheard him giving a promise to someone over the sat phone that this time the mission would be accomplished and the desired outcome achieved. “The warfi
ghters will be eliminated,” Lugmeyer had said. “No matter what.”
At the time, Cal hadn’t thought much of it. “Command, this is Eagle. Over.”
Lugmeyer had responded. “This is Command, Eagle. Sit rep?”
Cal rattled off the bare facts, conveying his hesitation to enter the cave as best as he could.
“Eagle, this is a go,” Lugmeyer said in his ear. “I repeat, Operation Warfighter is a go.”
Warfighter. The reference was usually associated with soldiers. Cal had assumed in this case it referred to taking out Grimes and his soldiers, but suddenly Cal wasn’t so sure.
He tried to shake off the nagging doubt. Lugmeyer, betray them? Never.
But after a minute…”Stand down,” Cal told his men. He shook his head hoping for clarity. His guts churned. He always followed orders, but this time… “Abort.”
Silence from his superior. Then, “A good SEAL follows orders, Eagle. Your orders are to engage the enemy. Now!”
“Lieutenant?” Tank’s voice was solid in Cal’s ear. “We follow you.”
Damn. He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t do—
Then from out of nowhere, the bullets started flying.
Shifting his shoulder, Cal tried to duck out from his superior’s hold, but Lugmeyer put him in a choke hold and tried to sweep his feet out from under him.
Cal didn’t hesitate. With anger rushing through his system, he threw the man over his shoulder and laid him out on the floor.
Lugmeyer looked stunned, his lungs struggling to draw air. Finally, he hissed. “You assaulted me.”
“You assaulted me first. And you ordered me and my men into a no-win situation. You knew it was a trap, didn’t you?”
Slowly, Lugmeyer sat up, then came to his knees, keeping a wary eye on Cal. “You’re suffering from PTSD.” He gained his feet, half bent over, and Cal took a step back in case he decided to rush him. “I’ll forgive it this time, but if it ever happens again…”
The anger was still working through his veins. “This? This isn’t fucking PTSD. This is me putting you on alert. When I get back to San Diego, I’m going to see the committee for my hearing and I’m telling them what you did. But right now, I’m going to find my wife. Don’t try to stop me again.”
Lugmeyer lunged as Cal suspected, but he was ready for him. He cold-cocked his senior chief in the jaw, sending the man down. Lugmeyer did a belly-flop to the floor and didn’t get up. Cal swallowed against the lump of acid in his throat, stepped over the man, and headed for the nearest exit.
The door led to a stairwell, the stairwell to the first floor and outside.
The hospital was a huge place with multiple exits so she could be anywhere, fighting her way through the crowds and looking for him. He couldn’t see over so many people so he scrambled up on an ambulance and searched the crowd, calling Bianca’s cell at the same time. The call went straight to voicemail.
The inside alarm ceased, leaving a ringing noise in his ears. In the distance, he heard sirens. The faces of his friends swam through this mind again and sweat trickled down the back of his neck.
How could you let this happen? How could you let her go?
They’d made it up a long tunnel and out into the sunshine. Outside, chaos ensued. Tephra’s hand was fisted in Bianca’s lab coat as he pulled her through the crowd. She thought he was simply helping her get clear of the throngs of people, but echoes of doubt kept looping through her head.
Everything he told me could be a lie.
He could still want to kill me…
…or Cal. I could be nothing more than bait.
The endless chatter inside her head assailed her to the point she couldn’t think straight. She could be following Tephra right to her death.
A few feet from an alley, she pulled up short, knocking his hand loose from her jacket. “Enough,” she said. “We’re not going any farther until you tell me who hired you and why.”
While she was panting from the run, he wasn’t even breathing hard. His eyes darted around the area. His body was still primed for a fast getaway. “A third party. Someone the V.P. has at her beck and call.” His eyes met hers. “Someone who knew all the ground details of Operation Warfighter.”
Ground details. No one knew those except the men actually going in. In the Otto Grimes case, Command and Control gave the go-ahead and the parameters of the mission to a selected commander/officer-in-charge and his senior chief. They passed on the assignment to their elite squad and made the nitty-gritty details with the SEALs.
Bianca tried not to be shocked. “Lugmeyer?”
Tephra looked away. “He wants my job.”
Her brain refused to process the information. “He sacrificed his own men because he wants your job? And I thought I was abnormal.”
“Abnormal? You’re weird and I’m stupid, but we’re both loyal to our country. I went into black ops to serve. He wants my job because he’s sick. He entered the military and became a sniper because he likes killing people. Twenty years of shooting the enemy, but then he made senior chief. No more sniping. Taking out his own team was to prove to the V.P. he was cut out for wet work.”
“He killed his own men?”
He gave her that, god, you’re naïve look again.
“But Lugmeyer was injured in the gun fight.”
“He shot himself in the calf to make it look good. What better way to take suspicion off him if there was any?”
Sickness burned in her throat. “He let Cal live.”
“He didn’t intend to. Something went wrong with his plan.” Tephra tapped his temple. “And Cal probably saw or heard something that could prove his senior chief is guilty, but it’s buried. He was betrayed by the one man he trusts above everyone. It’s buried deep.”
Bianca knew all about burying the pain of betrayal. Suddenly, her brain snapped to attention. “The PTSD. Cal is suffering from the trauma of losing his men, and he’s dealing with Lugmeyer’s betrayal.”
“I’m not a psychiatrist, but I’d say that makes sense.”
“Is Lugmeyer the one who’s going to shoot the president tomorrow night?”
“That’s my guess.”
A ringing came from Bianca’s pocket. “It’s Cal.”
“I have to go find the senator.”
“Don’t move.” She hit the connect button, sensing Cal’s relief through the phone when she answered. “Cal, it’s me. I’m okay.”
“Where the hell are you?”
Shadows darkened this side of the building. Tephra was trying to slip off and she grabbed the back of his scrub top. “East side. Can you make it to the parking lot? Rory and I will meet you at the truck.”
“Rory?” Cal said at the same time Tephra said, “I’m not meeting anyone. I’m going to find Patrick.”
“Senator Halston’s gone,” Cal said. He must have heard Tephra. “I don’t know where. They took him off in an ambulance.”
Tephra could easily have knocked her on her butt, but she held onto the scrub shirt and gave him the evil eye as she shifted the phone from her mouth. “You need to trust Cal. He can help you.” Then she told Cal, “We’re on the opposite side of the building from the parking lot, so it’ll take us five minutes or so to get to the truck, but we’ll be there. We have a lot to tell you.”
“Don’t hang up. Keep talking to me as you walk.”
The connection was his lifeline. Hers as well. She released Tephra’s shirt and made sure he was going to follow. He gave her a reluctant nod, then they started jogging, staying close to the brick building.
Bianca led the way. “We’re heading for the southwest corner now. Near the cancer center.”
Sounds coming from Cal’s end suggested he was running as well. Fire truck sirens nearly drowned out his voice. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.” But you won’t be once we tell you the truth. She tried not to think about how Lugmeyer’s betrayal would crush the last of Cal’s goodness. “Have you heard from
Emit?”
“Negative. I’ll call him once we’re clear of the hospital.”
The parking lot, truck, and Maggie were only a hundred yards away. Bianca had just started around the corner when a woman coming from the other direction crashed into her.
Bianca flew back when she bumped into the solid wall of Tephra. He grabbed her shoulders and stood her back upright.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the woman said, also grabbing hold of Bianca’s arm as if trying not to lose her own balance. She wore a floral top, her face covered by a mask. Bianca caught sight of her badge…Katy Smitrelny. The CNA.
Her fingers dug into Bianca’s arm. She was still wearing her gloves. The latex felt sticky. Bianca knew she was only trying to make sure she hadn’t done any harm, but Bianca couldn’t stand the sensation of the gloves on her skin, the pressure of the woman’s fingers. Why was she wearing a mask and gloves out here? Was she helping move patients?
Bianca jerked back. “No problem. Excuse us.”
She skirted Katy and Tephra followed. When Bianca looked back, she saw Tephra slipping a handgun into the waist of his scrubs behind him.
“What was that?” Cal’s voice came from her phone. “What happened?”
She stopped, covered the mouthpiece, and said to Tephra. “You pulled a gun on a CNA?”
He shrugged. “I pull a gun on everyone. It’s second nature.”
The thought actually made her feel safer. She uncovered the mouthpiece. “Ran into someone,” she told Cal. “No big deal. Is Senator Halston safe?”
His voice sounded muffled, his breathing kicking up a notch. In the background, she heard fire trucks. “No idea. Where are you now?”
“Almost to Parking Lot B. There’s a lot of people by their cars. Should we take the sidewalk to get to Lot A, or try to be more discreet?”
“You trust Tephra?”
She glanced over her shoulder. The man’s intense gaze was analyzing everything in front of them as well as keeping tabs on the rear. If he was lying, he was the best she’d ever met. He’d been willing to shoot Katy to keep her safe. “Yes.”